


Same Wavelength

by navaan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Canon Divergence - Iron Man 2, Comic Book Science, Espionage, F/M, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Fanart, Kissing, Mind Control, Saving the World, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19407328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Post-IM 2 Tony isn't with Pepper, when he sees Natasha Romanoff at a party. He puts it out of his mind, of course. But then she drops in on him under complicated circumstances...





	Same Wavelength

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lets_call_me_Lily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lets_call_me_Lily/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art Post: Same Wavelength](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417201) by [Lets_call_me_Lily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lets_call_me_Lily/pseuds/Lets_call_me_Lily). 



> This is one of two lovely drafts that were inspired by the wonderful art Lore sent in for the Cap RBB 2019 and all the discussions and brainstorm sessions we had after! I had so much fun finding out your views on the two and working out the ideas! I hope you like the finished product and will also like the next thin coming your way. 
> 
> Thank you for an amazing RBB!
> 
> Here is the art post of the wonderful art Lore made:  
> [](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417201)
> 
> Please leave her some lovely feedback. She deserves it! ♥
> 
> Thank you pazithi for looking this over!

The music was going for elegant jazz, but to Tony, it had the quality of old fashioned elevator music, and he wondered who had picked it. The same person who had chosen the decor, he would guess, that hovered between modern elegance and 80s chic. 

Worse.

The party itself was a bore.

Tony hadn’t expected anything else and that way at least it wasn’t a disappointment. As Pepper had insisted he wasn’t here to have fun, so he supposed it was all in order.

But there were still two hours to go before he could discreetly slip away.

He had promised Pepper to behave and “network.” Shaking hands and smiling was something he could do in his sleep. And he would try — even though his mind was on the new armor.

As it was all the time lately. 

It had been on the armor pretty much non-stop since Hammer had been put behind bars and Vanco had reminded Tony why being that one step ahead wasn’t just his own ego in overdrive. And perhaps his mind was on Iron Man so often because he had the time these days. Pepper was in charge at Stark Industries, and she and Tony had finally mutually decided that their attempts at a relationship weren’t working out as well as their professional relationship and friendship. 

Which brought him back to the reason why he was here now without her.

He kept from sighing. 

“Mr. Stark,” a man with a heavy accent said, and Tony turned, catching himself moments before fiddling with his cell phone. 

His head shot up, and he smiled, studied and professional _just like Pepper had told him to be_. “Oh, Dr. Moriera,” he said, hoping he placed the face of the older man with graying hair correctly. “Your speech about spacetime was inspiring.” 

He knew he had made the right connection when the man smiled, quite pleased with being recognized. Tony let him talk for a minute about his research topic and nodded along, his mind not entirely on the conversation. Pepper had been clear: They weren’t here to recruit new talent but to attract investors for their future ventures into clean energy projects. The Stark Expo damages had to be paid for after all, and while the company was on solid feet with its medical sector, the restructuring was an ongoing and still costly process.

“Can I have an autograph?” the doctor finally said and grinned, charming in his show of sheepish embarrassment. “My kids love Iron Man.”

Tony chuckled, relieved in many ways that this was the way their conversation turned. “Want to take a picture?” he asked. “Brag a bit about hanging out with superheroes?”

“Of course,” the man said, and his eyes twinkled. “I’ve never been the cool dad.”

“You’ll be now.”

He took the man’s phone and held it up, made sure they were both in the picture and then took another in which Tony grinned the celebrity grin. Then he handed back the phone, wrote a short message to the doctor’s kids on a napkin and signed it with a flourish. 

At the bar, he was handed a martini without having to ask for it and then leaned back to survey the room. He had played crowds like these for most of his life, and he’d never quite felt like he belonged, had taken every excuse to wriggle out of the responsibility and let it veer towards the irresponsible. But there were the rare gems to be found: the truly smart, the truly funny, and the genuinely charming.

He glimpsed a flash of bright red hair across the room. A dip of color in the see of elegant conformity. 

[  
Wonderful Art by Lore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417201)

Long red hair made up into a beautiful bun, a little messy to not make the woman with the stunning shoulders and pale-skinned back look like a strict teacher. 

The hair stood out just like a dress. 

The woman walked away from him before he could get a glimpse of her face, deep in conversation with two men, both considerably taller than her.

Too bad. Of all the men and women in this room, he’d thought he’d finally found one that was his type. 

A bit like his “assistant” SHIELD agent, he thought. 

Black Widow. 

Someone with that codename would have skeletons in her closet Tony wasn’t quite ready for. Not that he’d see her again any time soon.

He shook his head to rid his mind of that line of thought.

The evaluation, “Iron Man, yes. Tony Stark, not recommended,” still stung. Not that he didn’t know how he had earned it. He’d acted erratically, and from an outside view he’d been acting up. He _had_ been acting up, truth be told. That he’d been dying, preparing to have his company and legacy in the best possible hands while keeping the people like Hammer at bay — that didn’t count much to people with the crisis resilience of a SHIELD agent.

He took his drink in hand to find one of the potential investors to talk to and found a half-interesting conversation about the chances of e-mobility. Sooner or later, he thought, he needed to put building their own car back on the agenda.

After his current prestige project, Stark Tower, was done, he would look back into it.

Bell-like laughter reached his ear. The merriment and high pitch were new, but he had heard the voice before. Always level and calm…

He turned, and the red hair and dress were back in his line of sight. And this time the woman was feet away, standing with a man who was broader around the midsection than he was around the shoulders.

Their eyes met.

Agent Romanoff.

He stared for a split second. Her eyes flitted to him, narrowed and then glared in warning, all while she kept her conversation flowing, her voice sweet and the man across from her none the wiser.

Impressive.

Tony could handle a room full of press, investors, and the usual society sharks. He knew how to play a room, and he knew when he was watching a professional at work. If Romanoff was here and playing a role, then Tony could be sure she was here on spy business. He had no place in that, and as his working relationship with SHIELD wasn’t that great, he was more than happy to stay out of it.

Intelligence organizations and spy games made his skin crawl. Even those thinking they were the good guys were often just a stone throw away from the evil they professed to fight. 

He looked away, fell back into his own conversation, and tried to stay clear of red dresses for the next hour or so.

Later, he saw Romanoff standing right across the hall. Her companion fetched her a drink. Tony recognized him as Sergey Kuznetsov, a Russian oligarch and weapon’s dealer Tony had brushed shoulders with a couple of times. He had been one of the men trying to buy up Hammer Industries right after Hammer’s downfall to get the stolen Stark tech or get the tech Vanko had left behind. Tony had gotten there first, of course, but had been keeping an eye on the Russian’s activities ever since, trying to figure out his intentions.

The burly man with them Tony couldn’t place, but he’d thrown Tony a few gauging glances over the last hour. He had the air of someone who thought himself smarter than the rest of the room — complete with that self-satisfied smirk of the Hammers of the world. Someone who thought they had found the right investor to his venture? Was that why he had watched Tony? In hopes of getting an interview at Stark Industries?

Again the man looked his way, and for the first time, Tony realized burn marks were covering part of his face. 

When Romanoff’s partners were both finally looking away, he nodded at her. She gave him an imperceptible nod back, confirming that she’d been aware of his presence all this time.

That was that then.

Professional courtesy and acknowledgment and from here they would stay out of each others business. It wasn’t like they were friends or even co-workers in any sense of the word.

More than that, he was sure that whatever her objective was, Black Widow had it well in hand.

* * *

He’d been given one of the suites on the top floor, and while he knew he could fly back to Malibu and be back here tomorrow morning in time for the conference to start, he decided to be friendly and play it by the ordinary people rules.

Pepper would be proud.

He threw his black suit jacket over the back of a chair, kicked his shoes off, and sat down on a small armchair by the huge window in the corner. The view was good, but nothing like the one he had at home — and smugly he thought, that the view from Stark Tower would be even more impressive if all his plans worked out.

His phone beeped, and when he looked down, it was Happy sending him a message: “On a scale of 0-10, how safe are you feeling at your posh conference.”

“Solid 5,” he texted back. “Take care of Pepper and the company while I’m gone.”

They had finally agreed that Happy would be better off with a Chief of Security position at Stark Industries when Tony carried his own protective suit of high-tech armor wherever he went.

“Don’t joke,” Happy texted back. “Watch your back.”

Tony laughed into the silent room and then pushed the phone away.

He wasn’t tired yet, just glad to be away from people. In his pre-Iron Man days, he’d been the heart of the party, and when he’d returned to a hotel room, it hadn’t necessarily been to sleep. But at least then he hadn’t had to sit around pondering what to do with himself.

Flying back and forth would at least have given him a few hours in the workshop — but bore the risk of getting so lost in work that he didn’t come out in time or had to return without sleep. And he didn’t want Pepper to think he wasn’t putting in an effort now that they were business partners and not lovers.

“Setting up shop here then,” Tony said out loud. 

He pulled the black briefcase from under the desk in the corner, opened it to activate the unfolding of the armor inside.

The unfolding process was satisfying to watch every time. To make it work, he’d had to find ways to make the metal lighter but as durable as before and the circuitry was still his most significant problem. Because of the many parts of the armor had to split down to the microcircuits had been sized down further, but cables and everything else had to fold down and were now prone to malfunction.

He would have to improve on that, and he already had plans for it.

The Iron Man Mark V stood in the room now, like a silent red and silver knight.

Instantly, Tony felt better. “You’re so much more than a hobby,” he whispered and grinned to himself. He was working on finding ways to let Jarvis control the suit remotely. Iron Man could then genuinely serve as a bodyguard when Tony wasn't in it.

He set up his phone and called home. “JARVIS?”

“Yes, sir.”

He used the tablet to call up a projected keyboard over the table. “We’re setting up shop. I have a few ideas for the Mark VII that I want to put down. Give me a model of the schematics we have so far.”

The AI reminded him: “The remote work won’t update the core files. You connectivity there is terrible.”

“Don’t I know it? Just give it to me, and I will make my notes here. We can update when I’m back.”

A deployable suit was still his top priority — right along of giving New York a new skyscraper that would be run by an arc reactor.

He started working, glad the conference would end after another day. There were so many things that seemed more important to him at the moment.

* * *

The following day of the conference found Tony carrying his black briefcase to the one talk he’d promised to give. It rested against his bar stool while he sat into the side, watching the rest of the room. There was no enticing glimpse of red hair or deeply cut dresses. Kuznetsov was nowhere to be seen either.

Had Agent Romanoff’s business concluded? 

Later, when another Iron Man enthusiast with money, readily talked to him about investing in a new medical venture Stark Industries had proposed under Pepper’s leadership, Tony felt the hairs at the back of his stand on end. He had the definite feeling someone was watching him.

Half-expecting it to be Agent Romanoff, he turned to survey the crowd and found the burly form of the man who’d been with her and her charming Russian companion yesterday. He was staring at Tony, the scars on the left side more visible in the less flattering light of this room.

“Charming fellow,” Tony’s potential investor, said uneasily, and while he turned his head, Tony saw he was wearing an earpiece. 

Hearing aid? It was made of bluish metal and connected to a small black disk that was lodged under the ear. Some sort of medical device? 

He focused back on the man who was still watching him.

“Who is that?” Tony hadn’t bothered to ask anyone at the party yesterday, focused on Kuznetsov and the SHIELD agent he knew and pretended not to. 

“Basil Sandhurst,” the man beside him answered. “He was an electro-mechanical research scientist at Cord Industries, before it…” The man put his fingers up and outwards to indicate an explosion.

Tony knew about that, of course.

Cord had been among their main competitors until the explosion in their research facility about four years ago.

“How do you know?” Tony asked.

The man beside him looked startled then his face went blank so suddenly that Tony thought he was having a stroke. The next moment he was grinning again: “He was a brilliant man until the accident. Building himself up again. You should talk to him.”

Mulling over the sudden change in his companion, Tony nodded but decided that he’d done his duty here. He had promised to bring back some contacts for Pepper. He’d set up two appointments with investors that would back their new ventures — and he wasn’t here to recruit or look for interesting ventures to invest in.

He filed the name Basil Sandhurst away for later investigation, but the only person he’d hoped to catch before leaving was Agent Romanoff — although, he knew, had been a futile hope driven by his curiosity more than anything. For all he knew, she was back at SHIELD telling Fury, he’d seen him at a business venture where he’d seemed disinterested and dispassionate. Perhaps he’d won half a point by not approaching her directly.

What did it matter? It wasn’t like he’d be called in to consult any time soon.

Time to return to New York and work on his new high-rise pet project that wouldn’t just change the city skyline.

* * *

“You have it furnished already? Wouldn’t it be easier to live at the mansion or one of the apartments you own?” Pepper asked, her voice rough over the phone line.

“Just the two floors are furnished,” Tony said. “The top floors are still under construction, and we’re setting up the offices downstairs to be ready when we open the building, but that’s not going to be soon. 

“You’ll stay there?” 

“Until we’re done? Yeah, I think so.”

“Your workshop is here,” Pepper pointed out.

“I do have a workshop here at the Stark Industries main facility,” he shot back.

“That you never use.”

“Well, now I won’t have to,” he reminded her. “I can start setting up one right here in the new building complex. It’ll have all my toys.”

She answered with a moment of silence, then said: “I’ll be there for the press conference. That’s still on?”

“Good, yeah. Looking forward to it.”

“After the Expo, we could use some positive press in New York.” 

He shrugged, knowing full well that she couldn’t see it. He _had_ very visibly helped with the clean-up after the battle at the Expo, and he had plans to launch a regular workshop for science students at the rebuilt Expo facilities soon that he had yet to talk through with Pepper. Sending positive signals for New York’s future should make for better press. But his recent brushes with death had kept the topic of legacy on the top of his to-do list.

His legacy needed to be more than that of a reformed weapon’s manufacturer who’d built a shiny suit of armor.

“You’ll have it. Give it a couple of weeks, and we’re ready. Prepare your press conference. You’ll know where to find me.”

“47th floor?” 

“For now,” he said. “The penthouse is what I’m aiming for.”

“Of course.” She laughed. He much preferred the relaxed laughter to the tension and her underlying suspicions that he was avoiding her by moving across the country. He _wasn’t_ avoiding her, and he would prove it by whizzing in on time for the meeting she’d set for Tuesday at her office in L.A. — and he could drop into the Malibu workshop to gather what he needed before coming back.

Until then, he wanted to focus on the work here. Running a whole complex with arc reactor technology was a different scale from running a high tech suit of armor — although Iron Man did use up as much power per mission as the Tower would on a quiet day.

“See you Tuesday,” he told her and ended the call. “JARVIS? How are you feeling in the current set-up.”

“Running at full capacity, sir.”

“Good. Anything we can help with?”

“Construction is progressing as planned.” 

Tony looked at the plans. There were some things Iron Man could do faster than a crane. “Come on,” he told JARVIS. “Let’s give New York something to put all over the social networks.”

“The Mark IV, sir?” the AI asked laconically enough to rival the human butler he’d been named for.

“If you please,” he said and stepped towards the door to the staircase. Currently, he was storing the armor one floor down.

* * *

With a few days of work and some tapestries, the 47th floor started to look like an apartment. 

Not necessarily the apartment that he would be building for himself upstairs, but cozy enough to live in for the foreseeable future. He had a proper living room with a sofa and table and a small bedroom with the biggest bed they’d managed to fit in between the walk-in closets. Tony let the interior designer set potted plants all over the place to make it look friendlier. 

The kitchen wasn’t working yet, so Iron Man flew out whenever Tony remembered food was a necessity, picking up takeaway from his favorite places and sometimes surprising patrons with orders for all the construction workers doing their jobs at the Tower. A picture of Iron Man balancing a stack of enormous pizza boxes was the social media sensation of the week. Even Pepper admitted that the feedback to it had been so all around positive that their PR team couldn’t have staged it better if they’d tried. 

He worked with the construction teams, met the architects regularly for updates and spent the rest of the time in his newly secured make-shift workshop until he was too tired to stand.

Sometimes he didn’t even leave the workshop but slept on a cot in the corner.

Tonight he was ready to fall asleep on the sofa that was still standing opposite the empty space where a TV should be placed, but he hadn’t felt the need to get one when Jarvis could project screens for him here and in the workshop. It was too early to extend the AI’s reach to the upper floors, but Tony had plans for when to start with that.

He ate a sandwich that he’d picked up hours before that tasted stale now and then let himself fall backward on the sofa to close his eyes for a moment.

Something woke him — and he had no idea how much time had passed, only that it was dark and he was still lying with his back pressed to the soft leather of the sofa, his legs dangling over the edge. 

“JARVIS?” he asked to the empty room, sure that he had heard something. He slowly sat up.

“Si..r,” the AI said, the voice-distorting and breaking off as if the sound player was buffering while playing. 

His AI.

Buffering.

Or… shut off in the middle of the sentence.

He sat bolt upright.

The last time something like this had happened, a certain director of SHIELD had broken into his home. Since then Tony had enhanced his own security measures, looked very closely into SHIELD’s to make sure he knew what he was up against… and then had moved to an only half-finished building with too many vulnerabilities. 

He slid over the sofa’s armrest until his feet hit the ground and carefully stared into the darkness. Opposite from him were huge windows, showing him the lights of the city around him. 

Silence.

“I know you’re there,” he threatened. “And if you’re here you probably know who I am.”

But the Mark IV was stored one floor down, and the briefcase with Mark V was propped against the desk on the other side.

Time to finally make Mark VI and the remote deploy work, goddamnit. 

He heard a dull knock from the wall right where the ventilation system was running along. The sound carried, and he couldn’t pinpoint where the sound had originated. He got up and stepped around the sofa, to grab the briefcase and then run for the stairs if he had to. 

First priority should be to suit up.

Second to get JARVIS up and running again.

He moved towards the door that led to the stairs when the sound came again. Louder. This time from the elevator he’d just passed. 

The elevator _shaft_ that had no running lift yet, because the only ones that were up and running were the freight elevators on the opposite side of this floor. 

He stood frozen in his tracks, staring at the elevator doors.

A crash sounded from inside the shaft as if something had hit the security doors from the inside.

Slowly, he sat down the briefcase, opening it to let the armor put itself together. At the same moment, a zipping sound rose up, the doors slid to the side and Tony dove behind the suit that wasn’t ready yet, fully expecting to be shot at or worse.

With a swing, a form in a black suit landed in front of him on her knees.

The curly red hair was a dead giveaway.

“Agent Romanoff,” he said under his breath when she made no move to say anything. She hadn’t yet looked at him…

“Stark,” she barked, and even the sound was painful.

He knew that tone. It was a tone you used when you were a second away from giving in to the pain…

She raised her face, and in the darkness he saw her pale face. Her brow was sweaty and the side of her face was covered in blood.

He gaped, unsure what to say or do. Had she killed someone?

Here?

In his elevator shaft?

“I didn’t know,” she gasped, “where else to go…”

He had time to think: _Well, that makes no sense._ Then she fell to the side, hitting the floor, eyes closed and to his credit he found it in himself to move again, reaching her barely in time to catch her before her head could hit cold concrete. 

“Romanoff? This isn’t funny? Natalie? Agent? What did you mean, nowhere else to go?”

She had SHIELD to go to, hadn’t she? How had she come to him of all people?

“Natasha?” he tried again, shaking her shoulder. His hand came away with blood. He stared at it.

She groaned and convulsed in pain. Her eyes opened, not more than a slit, to fix on him. With a heaving breath, she said: “Sandhurst… He controls Kuznetsov. And Sitwell…”

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said. “Who’s Sitwell? And the science guy controls the weapon’s trader? Isn’t it usually the other way around?” And then the most important piece of information fell into place. “You’re hurt. You’re _bleeding_.”

“They told me you were smart,” she said, cynical even in her exhaustion.

“Why didn’t you just…?” _Call?_ Did agents know how that worked? Announce yourself ahead of time? The few he’d met hadn’t really bothered. They’d just stomped into his life at one point or another and treated him like a research object, potential ally or someone to be watched. Well, Coulson had tried to be nice about it at first. So perhaps it was Tony's fault for having made it clear that nice did only get you so far... 

“Nobody knows,” she said between gasps, “where I am, Stark.”

“I gathered. Why?”

But he realized that wasn’t their most pressing matter. She was bleeding and in pain and they were sitting in front of a non-operational elevator shaft, JARVIS was out, and behind him, the armor stood like a useless heap of metal.

“Needed to be... safe,” Natasha wheezed.

Safe?

Was she implying that he was _safe_? What did that mean?

Trust?

Wasn’t he _Tony Stark, not recommended_.

Tony decided that the details could wait. They needed to clean her up, dress that wound, and _he_ needed to figure out how she got in and how she’d shut down JARVIS. _Then_ he would listen to the hows and whys.

“Come on,” he said and pulled her up along with him.

The half-light out here made her look like a ghost — pale and gaunt face, dark circles under her eyes, matted red hair and blood on her cheek.

“Sandhurst,” she repeated. “He won’t stop.”

“Won’t stop doing what, Agent Romanoff?”

He led her inside the apartment and felt her stiffen in surrpise. “You live here?”

“Temporarily,” he said. “Didn’t know that? I thought SHIELD was keeping track.”

“I… I thought I did,” she said and then took a deep breath. She nearly stumbled.

He led her to the bathroom on the other side, not daring to pick her up and carry her while she was awake and not commenting on her admission that she was keeping tabs on him. Even now he had a feeling she preferred self-reliance, and he knew the feeling. Asking for help wasn’t something he was particularly good at.

In the bathroom, he put on the lights and could see the extent of her wound for the first time. 

She’d been stabbed in the shoulder, and a bump was forming on her temple, skin already turning an angry color there.

He’d seen her fight.

Whoever she’d faced must have known what they were doing.

“What’s that?” he asked, and his fingers brushed strands of her hair away. There was a small back dot beneath her ear.

Startled, she pulled away from his fingers and inspected it herself.

“I don’t know,” she admitted and look uneasy about it. “I thought they’d injected me…”

“They?” Trying to keep busy and move this forward, he picked up a first aid kit from the sideboard and opened it, surveying the contents. “Mission gone sideways?”

“My target,” she said between gritted teeth, “was bait.”

He brought the necessary supplies over and let her sit on the toilet. How did you tell a deadly SHIELD agent that they needed to slip out of their tight uniform at least in part so you could clean their wound?

_Don’t say the first thing that comes to mind, Tony, because she’ll kill you whatever state she’s in._

“Would you mind? This is probably not how you expected me to ask you to get out of your clothes.”

No muscle in her face changed and she looked up at him with an unamused look. “I’m surprised it took this long, yes,” she replied without inflection.

 _I have restraint_ , he thought sourly, _and I was with Pepper even if I was driving her away to spare her grief…_

He wasn’t with anyone now, and Natasha Romanoff was still as attractive as she’d been the first time he saw her — even in her terrible state. He could admit that much without danger, right?

They stared at each other in the stark light of the bathroom for what felt like minutes before she pulled at the fabric of her body suit. “You might have to cut it,” she admitted after a moment, and Tony went to bring better scissors for that.

The rest of the operation happened in near silence.

He cut the reinforced fabric where he saw an option to get through, surprised at the sturdiness of the design. He had experimented with Kevlar and metal meshes and different kinds of shock absorbing materials before but even he had to admit it was state of the art. 

“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked when the shoulder was bare and he could see the stab wound for the first time.

What had happened there?

Did someone stab her with a long kitchen knife? Who and why?

“I think so,” he answered, not offended by the doubt in her voice. “I’m living with a hole made for a high-tech battery in my chest. I know a thing or two about gaping wounds, okay?”

She didn’t flinch, and her eyes stayed fixed on the mirror, where she was watching what he was doing — cleaning the cut, determining how far it went.

“This might need stitches,” she pointed out. “I can do it myself.”

Like in a war movie?

Hell no. Not in his bathroom. 

“I have something better,” he huffed. He pushed her hands away from the first aid kit and proceeded with cleaning the cut. He’d developed something for wounds like this after his experiences in Afghanistan. After making sure the bleeding wasn’t too bad, the knife had hit on muscle and not arteries, he showed her the tube and made her push the edges of the wound together, gluing it shut.

She took a hissing breath while he did it, but nothing more.

“It’s not perfect,” he said. We’ll check it again later. It’s meant to dissolve after the wound has started healing, but it might dissolve sooner.”

All business-like one pale shoulder free, uniform hanging low enough to give him a teasing view of her decollete, she nodded. He swallowed, surprised. 

She caught him staring, held his gaze.

“You’re surprisingly well prepared for things like this.”

“You’re the one who picked this place,” he pointed out, not sure yet why she had come to him or the Tower in the first place.

“I knew you’d set up shop...” she explained and swallowed a pill against the pain after he handed it to her with a glass of water. 

His sink was pink with her blood, and she might as well have been a ghost. “Keeping an eye on me? Why I’m not an asset. Consultant only.” Admittedly, it wasn't hard to find out that Tony spent time here with the social media sensation he'd caused.

“...but not that you had built an apartment,” she finished her thought as if she hadn’t listened. 

She had listened, though. Her face was pale, but her gaze was clear and focused. People like her lived on information, and now he was left to wonder if she was testing him.

“Won’t be my apartment,” he huffed. “I’m waiting for workers to put the final touches on the penthouse.”

“I had hoped to find you,” and her fingers were tracing the edge of the little dark sphere beneath her ear, she tried to scrape it off but hissed in pain again. 

He cocked his head to get a better look at it. “What is it?”

“I… don’t know.” This time she hissed, irritated. She hated not knowing.

Something Tony could emphasize with.

He gave it a closer look, then without asking reached out to touch it. His hands slid along it, and she startled back, staring at his fingers. 

“Does it hurt?” he asked, not putting his hand down.

“You… startled me,” she said and glared at him.

“Well, darling,” he drawled, “do you want to know how I woke up? You startled me first.”

She bit her lip. 

From the kit, she took a compress and pushed it over the wound on her shoulder. Before she could proceed to strain herself with putting a bandage over it, he had picked it up and pulled it from the plastic. 

“Thank you.”

It was his turn to startle. “Come again?”

“For this…” She moved her chin to indicate the bandage he was wrapping around her shoulder. “I know you don’t trust me.”

He kept his focus on the task at hand. “I have trust issues, and you’re a spy. Of course, I don't.”

She smiled. “You have issues,” she agreed and sounded much chirpier than before. “I’ll be out of your hair soon, I just need to put myself back together…”

“You’re not put together.” He wasn’t pointing out that _putting herself together_ had been a team effort so far. “You’ll go to bed.”

She shook her head.

“You’ll rest, and when you look like there’s blood in your cheeks because the life juice is no longer dripping from other extremities, you can tell me what the hell this is.” He gestured at the two of them in his new, new, soon not his, bathroom. 

Glowering was a much better look on her. “Fine,” she said curtly.

Which he supposed meant: “Okay, I wanted to sleep anyway, I just needed to make you think it was your decision.”

He helped her stand, but she walked on her own, and he pointed her towards the bedroom.

“I can’t…” 

“Take the fucking bed, Agent Romanoff,” he growled because he never had much patience when someone refused a courtesy out of… courtesy.. “And before you do, tell me what you did to my AI so I can make sure we’re safe here.”

She stared than shrugged. “Had to get past the first level of security to get to the elevator shaft. Sorry.” 

That was all. With that, Natasha vanished in the bedroom.

“Okay,” Tony told the thing air. “That was that.”

In front of the staircase, the armor was still waiting for him, just as he’d left it. He put it on because that was faster than letting it fold back into the suitcase format, and went down the stairs - careful not to trip in the suit - to his workshop. 

Entry was set on his fingerprint and passcode, and he was glad to see Agent Romanoff hadn’t touched the systems here. 

“Sir,” JARVIS greeted. “Agent Romanoff is stuck in the elev…”

“Bedroom,” Tony finished before JARVIS could give him the now outdated warning.

“That was fast even for you,” JARVIS said with a hint of too much sarcasm.

“How did she get past you?” Tony said with a lopsided grin. He had programmed his AI with sass because he needed to be kept on his toes sometimes.

JARVIS didn’t answer but let some data spring up for him to inspect. “I am analyzing the entry point. She cut the wires connecting me to the apartment.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “We did shoddy work there. She wouldn't have had it this easy in Malibu.”

“We?” 

He grinned. “Sorry, JARVIS. I’m not taking all the blame, and it was only meant as a temporary set up. Tell me how to make it better though and quick. I actually do need sleep when...”

“When you went too much without it,” JARVIS concluded.

Tony shrugged, taking the point, but his mind focused on what he had done to give JARVIS back control of upstairs.

Yet again, he had his work cut out for him.

* * *

Fixing the problem took him less time than he expected, and yet he found ways to enhance his temporary security on the fly. By the time he returned upstairs, the first rays of dawn had fallen in through the windows.

“Run a search on Basil Sandhurst,” Tony said absentmindedly, happy to note that JARVIS reacted immediately now that access was restored.

Too wound up to sleep, he went to the mostly defunct kitchen to see if he could manage breakfast.

“Is Romanoff…?”

“Asleep, sir,” JARVIS informed him, as happy as Tony that he was back in the saddle.

He had no pots and pans, no functioning fridge. Only the small oven.

How hard could it be to get breakfast this time of morning, he wondered.

With some help from the workshop he improvised a pan and emptied a carton of eggs he’d left sitting on the sideboard at the beginning of the week, he went for slightly burned scrambled eggs.

He muttered: “I swear I used to know how to do this during college.”

“Been a while?”

Natasha was leaning in the doorframe with her good shoulder. Her hair was gathered in an untidy ponytail and the shirt she wore looked like one of his, as did the boxer shorts.

She’d gone through his clothes?

How long had she been awake?

“Since I had to feed myself?” he asked back, unable to pull his eyes away from the sight she presented.

Was it weird that she looked ordinary and stunning at the same time? That he didn’t just not mind that she’d taken his clothes but… liked the idea that she was wearing his things?

“I can’t imagine you ever had to.”

“You’d be surprised then,” he shot back.

“That seems to be your things. Surprise. Defying expectation.”

“Are we discussion my evaluation sheet?” Looking away from her, he pushed some eggs onto the only plate he had around and set the rest down in front of his place at the table in the makeshift pan.

Her brows knit together in a frown. “It wasn’t personal,” she said. “We wanted to know why you were acting…”

“Like there was no tomorrow? Yeah, I gathered that part.” 

He gestured to the chair.

She hesitated before sitting down. To Tony's surprise, she took up a fork and nibbed at the eggs. “Thank you,” she said then with a smile. 

“For burning breakfast?”

“For letting me stay.”

“The requested data is ready,” JARVIS announced.

“And you fixed your AI.”

“Gave him back access,” Tony corrected while JARVIS let the pictures of Basil Sandhurst flicker up in thin air.

As Natalie Rushman Natasha had seen this kind of thing a couple of times and there was no surprise at the projections appearing behind her. Her deepening frown had to be due to his topic of research.

“You don’t need to get involved,” she said. “I’m…”

“Hurt. And also this is curiosity. The guy gave me the creeps at the conference.”

“He,” she started and, after a pause admitted, “is dangerous. I was sent to look into Sergey Kuznetsov. It took me hours to realize the man famous for his connections to the mob, was afraid of his scientist friend.”

Tony studied the documents and headlines Jarvis had sorted for him quickly. There was nothing there that made Sandhurst stand out.

Until the incident at Cord.

That explosion and fire must have hit him hard. He dropped from the stage of research science for nearly four years after that.

With a flick of his finger, Tony sorted through the list of research papers the man had published. None of it was outstanding or exciting.

“The energy of the mind,” Tony muttered. “He sounds like a guru.”

Natasha squinted. “He talked like one too… It’s eerie. He and Kuznetsov argued. Next thing I know Sandhurst tells him to stop talking and go to the car and he just _does_. Like a robot. I thought he was just scared. But then the agent who was supposed to pick me up attacked me.”

“The SHIELD agent?”

“The handler,” Natasha explained. Then she held up a small USB drive. “I got the information Fury wanted me to get about Kuznetsov business and the engineers he’s been collecting. Then Sandhurst found out… Someone had _told_ him who I was.”

For a second unease settled in the pit of his stomach. Was Natasha implying he had given her away at the party?

Then her far away look set him right. “They came after me. Right to a safe house only someone with SHIELD clearance could know about. I know I left no trace of where I was going. I would have gone to an agent I trust, but if they could find me so easily, his family would have been in danger.”

Did it surprise him that agents had families? Perhaps when he pictured Coulson, Fury, and Natasha? 

“There was a mole? That’s why you didn’t return to SHIELD?”

“Yeah, a mole… Or… I don’t know. There must be something on here Sandhurst doesn’t want SHIELD or Fury to know.”

Part of it made sense now. She had been cut off from safe houses and SHIELD because she didn’t know who to trust. She had needed another place to go.

She’d come to him because nobody would look for her here.

Iron Man was not a SHIELD agent but the opposite of helpless.

All logical and straightforward.

“So despite my recent erratic behavior, this seemed like a safe place to you?”

“You’re not dying today — that should make you safe,” she pointed out. “And I don’t judge people on their mistakes but their actions going forward.”

“Deep, and their character flaws just go in a file,” Tony commented and doubted it was that easy. But despite his own trust issues he hadn’t turned her away. If not for dying and the relationship with Pepper so important to him at the time — would he and Natalie Rushman have hooked up? Would she have used it against him? Hadn’t she in a way used it against him already?

They had danced around each other a bit, and she _had_ flaunted her attractiveness to get herself where she thought she needed to be. How far would it have gone?

And what was he doing thinking about that now that she was sitting across from him at a kitchen table wearing a slightly too big light blue button-down shirt that he often combined with a silver-gray suit? Why did she look better to him than one of his one night stands? Because there was trust involved? Because the attraction was unrealized? Because Agent Romanoff could probably fling him across the room before he so much as touched her hand?

He hadn’t realized he was staring until Agent Romanoff gave him a Natalie Rushman smile, tinged with enough innocent flirtation to remind him that it wasn’t real..

Oh, she was aware of her effect on men, and she was ready to use it.

Was she using it right now?

For what purpose? He already let her stay? 

“What now?” he said. “How do you contact Fury without anyone knowing.”

She grinned. “You can,” she pointed out. “I know you tried to very subtly look into SHIELD, Stark.”

He thought: _Ah-ha, here it comes. The dance of flirtation and manipulation._

“You helped me prevent the Stark Expo disaster, I cleaned your stab wound. Call me, Tony,” he said gruffly.

Cocking her head to the side as if she wasn’t sure why that was important, she then smiled. “Natasha,” she said.

“I know that, Natalie,” he said back and folded his arms around himself, daring her to contradict him.

Natasha only grinned. 

Perfect, he thought. She liked to be challenged.

It seemed they had more in common than he’d realized.

“We could look into that,” he offered and pointed at the drive she’d put down on the table in front of her.

That she thought about it at all was a good sign. After a long moment of consideration, she decided: “We’ll contact, Fury. Then we start on this.” 

“Your call, Agent Romanoff. After all, I’m just a consultant, and your boss will get my invoices.”

She shook her head, face pinched as if she wasn’t amused at the joke. But there was a new energy to her, determination returning and driving out the exhaustion.

It was a good look on her.

Tony got up. She followed his example.

“JARVIS,” he said. “Can you work with Natasha to find a backdoor into the SHIELD communication grid we tracked down here in New York.”

Natasha looked even less amused at that. “I will give you a frequency,” she said softly. “No backdoors needed.”

“Ah,” he said. “Next time call and I’ll give you one for my place before you go looking for backdoors. Deal?”

She nodded, wincing a bit when she startled her shoulder.

“Let’s get to work then. JARVIS, if you please.”

* * *

For the next hour or so he kept out of Natasha’s way, while she and JARVIS played secret agent leaving coded messages. 

He did scan the drive and set it up in a virtual environment to see what data Natasha had pulled from her Russian arm’s dealer. At first glance, it looked like logs of the legal and less legal trades the man was involved in. Tony had seen some of the names pop up in his own life over the years, but more than that he’d seen many of the names in the hidden ledgers left to him by Obi. Only one stood out to him. It was a ten marked with a circle. Ten rings.

And they were marked as still active.

Very active if he went by these records.

But that couldn’t be all.

“JARVIS, what is this?”

At some point three months ago, things had changed. The deals had changed. Weapons weren’t at the center of the ledger anymore. Technological equipment, investments in tech companies, new names joined the old.

“There’s code being triggered by our search,” JARVIS warned.

“Found anything?” Natasha had washed her hair to get rid of the matted blood clotting it up. She looked much better now.

“We need to look at the thing still,” Tony said absentmindedly. “There’s a piece of metal someone stuck into you, and it can’t stay there. Believe me. I’m talking from experience.” He knocked a knuckle against the arc reactor under his shirt.

Her eyes widened in astonishment. “I forgot about it.” She reached up to feel for it at her neck. “I just looked in the mirror. How do I keep forgetting it’s there?”

With the bump on her temple, Tony would put his money on concussion. He looked at her, trying to think of a friendly way to tell her she might need a better medic than an engineering genius who thought to build yourself an arc reactor to save your ticker and run a red and gold tank to hide in was the height of field medicine.

He kept typing.

Ten rings.

The sign appeared again. Every new item had been marked with it and a huge M to the side. Was that their contact? Or did it indicate the payment mode? Someone would have to analyze this mess of dates and codes.

“Tony,” Natasha called. It was the first time she’d used his name.

And when Tony looked up, she had a gun in her hand pointed right at his head, and she looked pale.

He stopped typing.

“Okay,” he said and raised his arms. “See, this is why I have trust issues.”

“I am…,” she started, then she shivered. It looked like she was struggling for words. “It’s not me… I don’t want to…”

That moment, from the corner of his eye, he saw that JARVIS had pulled up the schematics of an earpiece connected to a small metal sphere. Like the one, Natasha had behind her ear. Like the earpiece, he’d seen the man at the party wear... He had not time to say anything.

An alarm went off, and Tony saw it in the way Natasha'S eyes widened and then lost all sparkle that she had slipped; her trigger finger moved, and Tony knew the armor was too far away to do him any good. He dove to the side, fell on the sofa table that didn’t take his weight and broke.

Above his head, three shots were fired. 

He landed in a heap of broken table on the floor, rolled to the side, noticing in the split second that all three shots had hit the wall right where his head had been a moment before.

“Guru,” he muttered and slid along the floor while Natasha shivered, fighting her own battle for control.

“JARVIS! Armor! Shut off the alarm.”

“Intruder alert,” JARVIS let him know.

“I noticed.”

Natasha turned, searching him with her eyes, the hand with the gun following him. “Tony,” she said and sounded barely in control. “He will kill you.”

“Sandhurst?” he asked. There hadn’t been time to look at the specs, but he had enough pieces of the puzzle. 

“If we open the vault,” JARVIS explained and meant the makeshift workshop, "the intruder will get in."

“Don’t open it.”

He still had the briefcase up here. He dove behind a wall before Natasha took aim.

There were also bits and pieces of gauntlets and the new homing devices he was testing for the Mark VI and VII designs strewn around the work desk where he left the briefcase. 

“Tony,” Natasha said in warning. “He wants me to… It’s not...” She gnashed her teeth. Her arm was shaking. She was fighting.

“It’s fine,” Tony reassured. “People usually want me dead. I’m not holding it against you personally.”

He watched her move around the debris of the living room table and then bolt into a run, sprinting for the door before he could try and stop her.

She was going for the door.

 _Opening_ the door. 

For the intruder.

“JARVIS!” he shouted. “Match repulsor frequency to the disk’s. Take anything you can from the data we have and help me neutralize it! _Fast_.”

“Sir, there’s a danger of…” 

Tony didn’t listen anymore. Time was running out. 

They might have met under circumstances that had not helped his trust issues, but despite all that — she had never given him a reason to think of her as an enemy. 

He got to his feet and ran — after Natasha but taking a turn along the wall to reach the desk. 

The briefcase was there. He could see it. But he knew he wouldn’t have time to get it, get the armor out and himself in it — not with Natasha’s perfect aim. He flung himself forward, wiping all the armor parts and tools from the desk, grabbing hold of a half-assembled gauntlet before he hit the ground. 

“Any time now,” he hissed to JARVIS, slipping his hand into the gauntlet-to-be that wrapped around his hand like a skeleton. 

He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it while his other hand grabbed the briefcase, pushing it behind himself to make sure he would have it ready when needed.

“Not so fast,” a male voice said, startling Tony into looking up.

Sandhurst stood behind two men who Tony had never seen before. Both had that blank far away look that Natasha was giving him glimpses of and were wearing SHIELD uniforms.

In the dim light of the hallway, Sandhurst's face was a terrible grimace. He was smiling.

Also… where was..?

With a leap she was on him, taking him completely by surprise. 

“Hng.” The back of his head hit the floor, and he groaned. They struggled. He expected her to go for his jugular, try to stab him. But she stared down at him, blank look battling distress, holding him down while one of the other men walked closer.

“I didn’t know you were involved,” Sandhurst said from the door. “When I saw you at the party I thought it was a lucky coincidence. Iron Man presenting himself as a target without knowing I even existed. That’s how people like you are, Mr. Stark, so brilliant you think nobody else exists.”

The man stepped fully into the room. Tony was only aware of the steps, the distance.

The briefcase was trapped under his shoulder, and when Natasha pressed down more of her weight, the position became unbearably uncomfortable. Her eyes narrowed, but with the proximity to whatever Sandhurst was using to influence her actions, it seemed she had lost the fight.

Her teeth were still clenched though, the face far from the completely blank expressions the men wore.

“You’re wrong,” Tony said, and he was looking up at Natasha. He didn’t care about Sandhurst. Perhaps he was talking right to her. “I’m a narcissistic son of a bitch, and I can go overboard trying to keep people at arm’s length following only my own directive…” He trailed off. Natasha was still staring blankly, holding him, but her eyes had widened.

One of the SHIELD agents had reached them.

A disk was in his hand, complete with earpiece and Tony knew this one was for him.

“But I don’t like disappointing those who trust me. Did it too often in my life..” he said, still speaking to Natasha.

“How touching,” Sandhurst said, nodding to the SHIELD agent. “You do not disappoint me. Iron Man will be a jewel in my collection.” He laughed.

“Sorry,” Tony hissed, and he knew he had to act now. “I wasn’t talking to you. JARVIS!” He pushed himself up without warning so that he could trigger the briefcase. It knocked him to the side as it opened and the armor built itself up, making the approaching agent stumble backward.

Natasha grabbed Tony by the throat using her superior fighting skills to trap him in a headlock.

Breathing was hard as she pressed her arm across his windpipe.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “This’ll hurt.”

With the half-built gauntlet, he reached up to aim for her neck and shot the tiniest possible repulsor blast at the disk he knew was there. It wasn’t enough energy to kill or severely burn the skin, but he knew from experience it wasn’t pleasant…

She screamed, surprised, and sagged backward.

“I won’t let them win,” he promised and pulled her closer to the desk where she wasn’t in the line of fire. 

The armor was in reach and only had to open and take him.

He settled Natasha down, made sure she was breathing. Because he was an incredibly corny mad man, he took the time to push a strand of hair behind her ear.

It was what cost him the moment of surprise. The armor was right there, but before he got to it, the other SHIELD agent had approached, grabbed him by the arms to restrain him.

“JARVIS,” Tony hissed. “Frequency.”

“Still calculating.”

“Thank you,” he hissed. The man with the device in his hands was back on his feet and ready to stick it on him. 

Damn it, he needed armor that reacted to his neural commands. Something that he could call at will and… 

His head snapped back and — damn did he need more hand-to-hand lessons if he wanted to be an unarmored match for SHIELD agents — one man held him fast, while the other man approached to put the disk on him. He kicked and fought, caught one man in the nose with his elbow, managed to kick the other in the stomach.

In the end, it was Sandhurst who used the confusion to step up with another disk and _stab it_ into the soft place beneath Tony's ear.

“It’ll be uncomfortable while it connects to your brain.”

“Fuck,” Tony groaned. He struggled while the earpiece was put into place but to no avail. 

_Get in the armor_ , Sandhurst said right into his mind. _Then give me access to the workshop._

 _No!_ he thought. _No, I won’t._

But he had already taken the first step.

A shot rang out, a bullet flew past Tony’s cheek.

Sandhurst cried out, and then went down. One of the agents stepped in front of him.

Natasha was on her feet, and she looked like a warrior ready for the final battle. “Don’t bother, Michaels,” she warned. “I can take you any day.”

Tony wanted to turn around to look at her, but he couldn’t

The voice in his mind said: _Get in the armor, Stark. Iron Man has a bug to squash._

The armor opened to receive him. He took another step, no struggle.

Behind him, the sounds of a fight didn’t even register until a body crashed into the wall beside him.

Michaels.

The Iron Man armor was there, and he reached out, felt the metal settle around his arm.

Someone grabbed his face, snapped his head around. 

He was nearly there…

_Get in the armor…_

Soft lips.

Shock.

Pressed to his.

He froze.

A body molded to him where Iron Man hadn’t already, and hands grabbed his hair, pulled him deeper into a kiss. He could smell her, the sweet scent of her, mingling with the bergamot smell of his favorite shampoo.

Natasha.

She pulled away

His eyes fell on lips that were the same perfect red hue of her lush curls.

She looked at him, hand on his shoulder. 

Then she grabbed the earpiece and pulled it out.

The disk stayed in, sending an electric jolt through him — pain.

Sandhurst shouted: “No!”

“See,” Natasha said. “You’re not letting anyone down.”

“Only because of you.” He pulled his arm from the suit to properly stand in front of her. “You saved me.”

“It was my turn.”

“Is that why you…?”

“The same wavelength,” she whispered, and he realized he was still staring at her lips. “I knew you were like me. Always proving you can be better… Trying to outdo yourself.”

Her smile was brilliant, and even through the haze of pain, caused by the disk, he felt warmth well up inside of him.

“JARVIS?” he said and didn’t look away from her. 

“Frequency?” 

“Ready.”

A terribly sound shook through the space. They fell to their knees. The bodies of the agents convulsed. 

Natasha’s disk dislodged first, fell to the floor. Then his gave out…

When it was over, all he could hear was the sobbing of Sandhurst, who was mumbling to himself, and the sound of Natasha’s breath in his ear. She held him in a tight embrace, holding on, protecting… The difference between giving and receiving support had melted away.

Their eyes met and then, carefully, trying to make sure this was allowed and not a dream, he leaned in to steal a kiss.

She welcomed it and him with open arms.

* * *

_Three months later_

As of an hour ago, the arc reactor had taken over, and Stark Tower was running on clean arc reactor energy alone. Pepper had been there, congratulated him and after they’d toasted to the company’s future went back to the office to send out a press release to announce their success.

Only then had JARVIS alerted him to another visitor in the Tower.

He took the elevator down, let himself into the apartment and there he found her sitting on the sofa, looking out of the window across from her. Night had settled, and New York was a glittering kaleidoscope to watch.

Her hair was shorter and less curled than the last time she’d dropped in on him. He liked it immediately but stopped at the corner to watch her the way she was watching the city. Above her head, three ugly holes still marred the wall. He had never bothered to fix that.

She had neither announced her presence nor visited him in the upstairs where he’d been busy. 

Where he’d been talking and toasting with Pepper.

It wasn’t unusual that Natasha dropped in without a word.

She had a habit of doing it — had surprised him with dramatic entranced a couple of times during the last weeks. He didn’t mind. 

There was this thing between them that pulled them back to this, that was good and easy when it was just the two of them. They never talked about it and, hell, he refused to put a name to it, but it was important to him.

Of course, his SHIELD agent knew he was standing there the whole time.

Finally, she grinned up at him, patted her lap, as if she was trying to lure a big, affectionate cat to sit there.

He smiled and went, let himself down on the sofa, settling his head in her lap — because he had no problem at all to play the part of the willing pet.

She stroked her fingers through his hair and then whispered: “Congratulations.”

“You heard?”

“I listened in,” she admitted and smiled. “Didn’t want to steal your moment.”

“Why are we meeting down here? I live in the penthouse now.”

“I like it,” she said. “We shared good moments here.”

“We can share some good and entertaining moments upstairs if you’re up to it.” He wriggled his eyebrows, curious about the quiet mood she was in. Nothing suggested tension. And Natasha wasn’t one to show her insecurities easily, but there was no reason to think this was about _insecurities_. 

When she grinned, he knew he was right. Natasha knew her own allure, knew the power she could have over him when attraction took over, and they allowed themselves to be lovers without second thought or regret — when all the games of life, of espionage and corporate strategy and warfare, stopped to matter. Reading his mind, she let a finger trail along his cheek: “Of course, I will give you more entertainment than you bargained for. Are _you_ up to it?”

[  
Wonderful Art by Lore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417201)

He laughed. They were in many ways two of a kind — lonely souls looking for a companion, smart people looking for someone who could keep up, strategists living on the edge of danger and hoping someone would understand.

“I need to get the wall fixed finally and then…”

“Don’t…” she said, and it was very much an order. “It’s a good reminder of why we’re here.”

He stared. 

Something occurred to him. “It’s yours,” he said, as quickly as he had handed over his company once.

“What?” She looked down at him, and her eyes were twinkling, but she really had no idea what he was saying. 

“The apartment. I don’t need it. You don’t want me to fix the wall so I can rent it out, so… It’s yours. Your own place.” 

Her eyes widened — an uncharacteristic show of surprise. “I can just drop in with you…”

“I’m not always here, but you should have a place here always.”

His heart started pumping faster. What was he doing? Was he naming the unnamed thing? Jinxing it? 

She smiled, relaxing, stroking her fingers through his hair again and simply said: “Thank you.”

Nothing more had to be said, and they’d convey their emotions to each other later when things got hot, and passion ran away with them, communicating best when there was no need to talk at all.

A phone rang.

Hers.

He raised an eyebrow.

She picked up with a shrug. 

“Yes, the mission is complete,” she said softly. “No, I’m… What?”

Her face darkened. 

“What do you need?”

She listened.

Tony had there lousy feeling that there wouldn’t be a fun part to this evening after all. He refused to sit up until she made him though.

“I can take Stark,” she said, and their eyes met.

He quirked an eyebrow. “Take me?” he mouthed. 

“No,” she said decisively. “I’m in New York already. I’ll pull him in and get the big guy.”

Tony still stared. Her voice was too severe and tense.

And what had Tony to do with anything?

Finally, he sat up, not breaking eye contact.

She nodded, while he started using his phone to project screen around them, a keyboard, started up pulling information while she was still talking. When he needed less than two seconds to get past all SHIELD firewalls, she smiled, even though it looked like she felt like anything but smiling.

It was all before him in a flash. Captain America, Tesseract, Loki, agents controlled by a mad man — wasn’t that an uncomfortable repetition of a recent event? 

Aliens.

Tesseract.

Avengers.

He turned to Natasha, who said: “Yes, why don’t you get the Captain. Leave convincing Stark to me.”

She hung up, pushed the phone away.

“Figure me convinced,” he said, “but you owe me a good time later.”

“You just gifted me an apartment, you'll have the best time,” she said, and under the surface of deadpan playfulness was still that tension. They both knew this was _it_ , the thing Fury had feared might make a strike team necessary. “Let’s get to work so we can get to the good part faster.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “Where do we start?”

She grinned, half amused, then with two hands enlarged one part of his many screens.

A green monster was destroying Harlem.

“Ah,” he said. “I always wondered when I’d get to meet him.”

“Your chance,” she said and kissed him on the brow. “Suit up, Tony. I need you.”

He was way ahead of her. The new suit was ready to go at any time. To impress her, he pressed a button on the electronic wristband. A moment later Iron Man was ready…

… and Tony Stark didn’t miss the glimmer in his lover’s eyes at his demonstration of combat readiness. 

It was always good to know they were on the same wavelength.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art Post: Same Wavelength](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417201) by [Lets_call_me_Lily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lets_call_me_Lily/pseuds/Lets_call_me_Lily)




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